final music video

Evaluation of music video

Evaluation of our music video

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The song we chose was a very stereotypical acoustic-pop song. The song was “Mayday” by Tenbucks. As we began to research this genre of music, we came to the realisation that the videos of this genre had various things in common. Through looking at videos such as Enrique Iglesias “Takin’ Back My Love” we realised that these videos often have a love interest and some kind of argument between the two characters. The lead singer of the song is also normally the main character. We incorporated this idea and made it our own. Although we obviously did not have the lead singer of Tenbucks we made it obvious that the character was supposed to be the lead singer by having him singing in the video and having him on the DVD we created. We used parallel editing to have our lead singer character playing the song to himself in the woods while the love story plays out in-between these shots. We also looked at Joshua Radin’s music video “I’d Rather Be With You” and all agreed that the style of video fitted very well with our song. The video shows a man alone playing a guitar and singing the song while he thinks about a love interest he once had. We liked the idea of having the artist as the main character of our video and so incorporated it in to our own. The song is about a girl he was in love with and then they fell out of love. With the combination of the sets, camera angles and narrative the video is very emotional. This is what we were trying to achieve with our music video. We also decided that the costume of our characters was important in make the video seem authentic. The right clothes were essential to make sure we followed the conventions of a acoustic-pop music video. We dressed our main character in smart casual clothes. We felt this reflect the general feel of the song. It look mature and showed that the artist is serious about their music. Making the main character look fashionable also helps to sell the artist as fans would want to copy the fashion sense that the artist will be associated with.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

As a group we decided it would be best to link our ancillary texts as best as we possible could to the music video. This would help to promote the video and would join the artist’s work together. The magazine cover we created as a group features the guitar played in the video leaning up against a tree. By doing this we are linking the magazine cover to the music video we created in numerous ways. The guitar links to the artist and their genre of music and the tree links back to the setting of the video. Someone who had seen the video would instantly be able to link it to the magazine cover. Our DVD cover also links to the video. The cover shows the main character/artist in the same woods the video was shot. He is standing by himself, as the woods appear to go on for miles behind him. On the back cover there is the same picture but taken from behind the character. This signifies the meaning of the song as it is about the singer feeling lonely, isolated and unloved. Because all of our products are connected by a reoccurring theme they will all promote each other. Fans will be able to find the artists material more easily due to the reoccurring themes.  We tried to make the images in our ancillary text as interesting as possible in order to attract audiences. We decided to have contrasting effects on our DVD cover, as it would make the project look unique. The mosque style background helps to make the main character stand out from the picture.  As a whole the products when combined together create a recognisable theme of which the audiences and fans can remember. We all decided upon having two pictures on our DVD cover. The front cover was to have the artist facing the camera and the picture on the back was to be the same picture but from behind the artist. We all felt this worked very well and looked very effective. We felt that by giving the audience a view from in front and behind the character the audience would get the impression that the person is completely alone and almost isolated in the woods.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From our audience feedback of our rough-cut video we learnt that our overall concept was good and we executed it very well. A lot of People felt that our storyline was very effective and it helped make the video interesting and was useful in explaining the story behind the song. Various people also felt that our characters were suitably dressed and the editing we did for the flash backs of our video was effective. Some people also made comments towards our camera angles and believed that although they were simple they were very effective.  However, there are things that people suggested we could improve in our music video. They suggested that we improve some of the lighting in our shots. Others suggested that we should try and make our guitar more in sync with the music to make it seem more realistic. We learnt from all of these comments and re-filmed the shots that did not come out great the first time. We also were able to lip sync in our new footage as complications with music prevented us from doing this the first time round. The feedback we got for our final piece was overall quite positive. A lot of people mentioned that our narrative was effective and our editing helped a lot towards the continuity of it. People also liked the changes we made to the colour correction of our flashback clips. Another positive mentioned in the feedback of our final piece was that the locations we used in our video made the narrative seem very believable. However, they did say that our editing could have been better in the climax of the song and suggested that we could have edited our video around the climax. They also believed that our lip-syncing could have been better in some areas of our video. Some people also felt that we should have given our story more time in the video as it seemed like it had been rushed into a small space of time. As a group we took all these criticisms on board and will use them to ensure our next project is as good as it can be.

        How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research was vital in the making of our music video and there are numerous programs that aided us in fulfilling our research into various music videos and genres. The first was “Safari” which allowed us to search the Internet for influences and ideas. We also used “Blogger” to blog all of our thoughts and ideas on our research and our music video. Blogger was an area where every person in our group could post individually so we had a way of keeping all our ideas organised and in the same place and it helped us enormously. Blogger also gave us the opportunity to show others our project and to collect feedback from them. Without this we would not have been able to improve upon our project from where it was when it was a rough cut and our project may not have been as good as it is now. The HD video camera we used to film our project gave us high quality videos for us to use and made the whole process very easy. The camera was incredibly simple to operate and we could not have completed our project to the standards we would have liked without it. We also used a HD digital camera to take the pictures of our storyboards so we could post them on the blog, the DVD cover and the magazine cover. This provided us with very good quality images for us to use to make our project look professional. To edit our video we used “Final Cut”. This was incredibly helpful as it allowed us to get all of our shots in order, to the places that we wanted them and allowed us to place effects on our footage such as fades and colour corrections. Final Cut was essential in our editing; it allowed us to syncing the video to the music efficiently and easily and allowed us to place effects on the video. These actions were essential in make our narrative flow continuously and without confusion. Final Cut also allowed us to edit the footage we filmed in front of a green-screen for our director’s commentary. This allowed us to have footage from our music video rolling in the background while each one of us explained how we filmed our project and how we went about editing it.  “Photoshop” was essential in producing our ancillary texts. We used Photoshop to edit the pictures we took for our DVD cover and Magazine cover. Without Photoshop we would not have been able to create the mosque effect we used for the DVD cover or add text and pictures to the images we had. Thanks to all of these produces and programs we were ale to produce professional looking projects efficiently and easily.

draft

Script for our Directors Cut:

Mark: We decided to film a music video for the German band Tenbucks. As the song is pop-rock we felt it was necessary to follow the conventions of that genre.

Harriet: We achieved this by having a story line running throughout the video, which is common in a lot of pop rock videos. There was a love interest in our video as we felt it reflected the lyrics of the song.

Beth: We all had a collective idea about what we wanted to feature in the video. By using ideas that many music videos had used before we took inspiration from Joshua Radin’s music video “I’d rather be with you” and Enrique Iglesias’s video “hero”. Both of these had elements that we thought would look and be good for our music. Despite this we tried to make ours more unique by practising with different techniques.

Jack: In terms of Goodwins points we looked at previous groups videos and famous ones also to see if they follow the criteria. We then used this to our advantage as we knew what looks effective and what sells the song.

Mark: Firstly, we made sure the main character (artist) has the most screen time, this helps to promote and makes the viewers remember his identity for future preference. We also felt that people can relate easily to our video as breaking up in a relationship is a common scenario, this goes along with the lyrics and creates part of the target audience.

Harriet: Despite this we did feel it is stereotypical for an acoustic video, however the setting and the atmosphere worked well with the song.

Jack: Our ancillary texts worked really well when it comes to all 3 as a product. We tried to keep the mood and style similar throughout so the band is recognisable. Also, our main character who plays the guitar, the guitar is used for the magazine advert to make it related to the video, without making it the same and therefore making it look boring.

Beth: The ancillary texts are an advertisement for the music video and vice versa. They are both affective at attracting the target audience as the images reflect our video.

Mark: In terms of the genre we had to assume that all their songs are similar because we couldn’t find any others. We researched this so the digipack would look effective for a band rather than the song on its own.

This is just our draft, we added more when we came to filming the commentary.        

Magazine Advert

Analysis of "Razorlight - Up All Night" CD cover

The Front Cover-

The front of the cover of the CD shows a plain white background scattered with items that are either important to the band or featured in the album. Amongst the items is an "Old-style" TV which appears to be playing a video made by the band, hotel room keys - most likely used by the band, set lists and Vinyl record covers. We thought this was a very effective and attractive cover to represent Razorlight's album. The cover also fits in well with the band's sound, as the band have a relatively "Indie-rock" sound.

The Rear Cover-

The rear cover of this album has the text as if printed on a train ticket or receipt. this looks very effective and continuing with the theme on the front of the CD. The rear of the CD shows the features on both discs and the track listing on "CD 1". We really enjoyed the simplicity of the rear  cover, having such a plain background and incorporating the information on the receipt was a nice touch.

Analysing a CD cover

- Even though we are doing a DVD cover the conventions of this CD cover can help...
Firstly, Kelly Rowland features on both the front and back of the CD, the pictures have simular contrast and colour and the theme is kept throughout, this makes the cover flow easier and look more proffesional. Also, there is glitter featured on the cover, this is shown by the glitter on her dress on the front and her back on the flipside. This looks effective as its shown differently on each side, for example if she wore the dress on both it would look boring.
Furthermore, both sides are not full of too much information, this simple effect prevents it from looking too packed and its easier to read and follow. Moreover, Kelly is central on the front therefore the focus is entirely on her. Also, the text suits the genre of the CD as most R&B text is similar to this, by doing this it makes the CD identifiable.
On the actual CD cover it looks slightly different to the pictures above although these give a good idea as to the layout of the CD.

Feedback evaluation

The feedback we got on our video was generally quite positive. People believed our narrative was effective and our editing to make sure there was continuity helped towards this. The people watching our video also believed that our flash back editing was good especial when the video goes into black and white. They also thought that our costumes were appropriate and effective and the locations we used were also very good in make the story seem believable. 

However, they did say that our editing could have been better in the climax of the song and suggested that we could have edited our video around this climax. They also believed that our lip syncing could have been better in some areas of our video. 

As a group we have taken on board the criticisms of our video and will use them in order to make our future projects better. 

Analysis of a music video

This is the rock song we decided to analyse, as our song is both pop and rock and we have already analysed the pop video we are now going to do the same with the rock video, we decided to choose nickelback because they are a rock band that everyone knows and was an obvious choice.

The video is set in a city and is also the theme song to spiderman, you can tell this as it has scenes from the movie and the video is very intense, this creates an atmosphere which builds up. This also helps to promote the film and make it look good.

analysis of a music video

because our song is a pop-rock track, I am going to analyse a pop video and a rock video.



this is a very "poppy" song, as you can tell by watching the music video. The video's creators have made it look very sweet and innocent with the ballons floating in the sky and the "Bubble-gum sugar sweet" candy feel to it, with them walking through the streets while she is singing about her love for this male character. They are trying to sell the artist as a young teenager who is falling in love with said male, as she is the sole artist of the video. Because she is a solo artist she has the camera mostly on her with some wide angle shots of the sky with the ballons in the sky.

they have cut the video well to fit with the feel of the song, long and short shots and they match with the beat.

Target Audience

Our target audience is all ages, however some people will be able to relate to it more than others. An example of this is teenagers the same age as the actors in the video, they have probably experienced a simular situation where one has broke up with the other etc.
Also, our video is very simple and easy to understand, therefore the younger audience will be able to watch it and know roughly what is happening. This will also relate to how clear we edit the flashbacks in comparison to the actual video.

Classification

Our video will contain nothing inappropriate and will be suitable for anyone to watch, even children. We have also taken into consideration the lyrcis and checked if there was any bad language or sayings. Despite this we didn't have an issue as there wasn't anything we needed to change.

feedback for our draft

positive: 

"Flashback effect looks cool"

"Shot types were good"

"Really good narrative, easily understandble"

"Shot frequency and variety makes it interesting"

"Good use of shots, simple but VERY effective"

"Very effective ending"

"Good skills with the guitar"

"Good setting"

Negative:

"Improve lighting"

"Why does she give him her jacket?"

"More feeling could be included in the jacket, especially facial expressions"

"Guitar in sync"

"Work on syncing couple need a bit more chemistry. Lighting is too bright so lose face at points" 

"Guitar sync, fade out at big strum."

"Could be lip synced to the guitar"

feedback from rough cut

positive

- nice variety of shots.

- good shots.

- good lighting effects.

- a good variety of shots that fit in the video and song really well.

- romance is beautiful and creative editing on couple together.

- tells a story with good shots and good ending shot.

negative

- bit of the lighting could be toned down. I realize its a flashback but it sometimes looks weird.

- the actor is laughing, shots change to quickly and need to make the storyline clearer.

- guitar isn't on sync and the fades are too bright. 

- not so keen on the bright effects when sitting on riverside against a tree.

- editing is too bright, would look better b&w.

- more camera angles.

- to make it look leng you need to sync the guitar and sing.

Our Rough Cut video

This is the rough cut we have made of our music video:

Who are Tenbucks?

Tenbucks are a German rock group that aren't well known in the UK even though they sing most of their songs in english, they don't have any music videos on Youtube and their videos on Youtube are just a picture of the band.

The group have tried to research the band the best that we can, however there is very limited information on the internet about the band themselves, seeing as the band are very small and do not have a large following.

Problems encountered during the rough cut process

As previously stated, our group was looking to film on Wednesday the 12th and Thursday the 13th. However, once the day came to shoot our music video, and take our camera from the media department, there was confusion regarding how long we would be able to have the camera off school grounds.

Due to this mishap, our group were unable to film on these to days so ended up being behind the other groups as we didn't get enough time to film all of the scenes that we wanted, this resulted in our group filming on school grounds - not our chosen filming site, whilst being under pressure from time constraints.

Having said this, we were able to get some very nice shots which we will use in our final piece. Most of the shots of the lead character, playing the guitar, and some of the environmental and relationship clips will be kept.

We want to feature an argument in our video between the couple, whilst researching we came across this  video. Despite this we wont film the argument to this extent although it has given us many ideas, especially of shot types etc.

Tenbucks - Mayday lyrics

I met you at a party,

In the car of a friend,
When your in my lonelyness,
it came to an end,


It started out so good,
Felt like we really had,
At least some things in common,
But the guess was bad,

Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,


Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,


Woke up the next day,
Back in my own place
I wanted to avoid,
that she'd seen my face

Thought it'd be good,

If we'd forget as fast,

If there was any way possible,

I thought that might be,

Best,

Mayday, Mayday

I'm breaking in,

Mayday, Mayday

Where've i been,
Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,


Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,


And i know we've both changed,
So it's all good,
If i could chose differant,
Then i guess i would,


Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,
Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,


Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been.


These lyrics will be important in the lip syncing of our video. Without our actor knowing all the lyrics to our song and where and how they are said in the song the lip syncing will look unprofessional and bad.